Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Yeah, so one of the things is they never take responsibility for their actions.

And by this time, many autocrats have bought into this propaganda that they are infallible.

that they can do no wrong.

And so they will never say they're sorry or admit failure or blame.

So what's better?

You throw other people under the bus.

So most autocrats are constantly reshuffling their governments.

It's really crazy.

And one of the reasons I wrote Strongman was to like,

to demystify this idea that autocrats are efficient so like Mussolini made the trains run on time well in reality every four years he totally reshuffled his cabinet right so that happens and we're seeing that because the people they put in are incompetent often to start with

and that's by design it's by design and why would why would somebody who wants to rule over you know in an autocratic dictatorial way why would they want incompetent people what's the psychology behind that because they're threatened of people who are too competent and they don't want people who have independent sources of power independent networks

And so they did this from the very start where Tulsi Gabbard was put in there in a director of national intelligence with very few contacts in the intelligence world so that she would be dependent on him or whoever is his trusted person.

The same with Hegseth or the people have to be flawed so the leader has something over him or her.

And so you have these people to begin with who are set up to fail.

And then when the autocrat inevitably creates crises, they don't know how to handle it.

Look at Kash Patel.

And so that's one thing.

The other thing that autocrats do if they start sinking in the polls and they get really worried that something's going to happen to them electorally or otherwise is they go to war.

They either deepen conflicts that they're already involved in instead of retreating, and Netanyahu has done this, or they start a war, and then they get into worse trouble.

And this is called autocratic backfire.